Macabre Explanation of Opportunity Costs

[tcpip]

For those who haven't seen it...

I think dead children should be used as a unit of currency. I know this sounds controversial, but hear me out.

Comments

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[lesslucid]

Medicine is a science (in the sense that it pursues the question of what works and what doesn't through the scientific method) that is motivated by subjective valuations and opinions which exist outside the domain of science and therefore can't be investigated or verified scientifically. (eg, "It is better to alleviate suffering if we can", "We should try to prevent people from dying of communicable diseases", &c &c). The method is scientific but the motivation belongs in the domain of philosophy. Economics ought to be the same; as soon as it goes beyond being predictive (as is physics; "what will happen if we apply force X to object Y?") to being prescriptive (as is engineering; "the best way to build this bridge is to use material X because of properties Y and Z...") then it necessarily is motivated by values and opinions about the aims that it should be used to pursue. The idea that, for example, "increasing efficiency" is an ideology-free goal is quite wrong. Just because the idea is widely accepted as a good one by people across the ideological spectrum doesn't mean that it is value-free, it just means that it is a commonly-held value. Prioritising it ahead of other values is inherently a philosophical (or ideological or subjective or value-laden or whatever descriptor you prefer) decision. Having differing beliefs about the ends to which economic understanding should be turned no more invalidates it as a science than does, for example, having differing beliefs about the appropriate point to change for curative to palliative care changes the nature of medicine into "non-science".

Re: ...

[lesslucid]

The debate is about whether mixing your moral concerns over dead children with economics makes it stronger- it often does not.

No, the point I'm making is that you can't separate moral concerns from economic ones. You are arguing for a particular form of response to an economic situation because you believe it's the most effective in dealing with that situation. Insofar as you are arguing for any kind of response at all, you have already "mixed" moral concerns into it. If two people agree on the desired ends, then the question of how to achieve is a technical question, which can be answered through scientific inquiry. But if we disagree about the ends - or the priorities of various desirable ends - the question is no longer a technical one. You appear to understand the point - you begin by repeating the argument I've just made as though it were a refutation - but then you go on to speak of the dangers of "mixing" economic and moral concerns as though it were possible to have an "unmixed" form. You seem to think that a person who cares more about the answer to the moral question (should we save dying children in Africa?) will consequently get the answer to the technical question (what's the best way to achieve that goal?) wrong. It's like saying a compassionate doctor will somehow magically forget which pain-relief drugs are most effective. Of course, the strength of one's feelings on moral questions isn't a guarantee that one will get the answers to the technical questions right, but that's incidental. What's important is to understand that all of economics, every form of it, includes a moral viewpoint and a philosophical worldview. Your notion that there is a single "clear" economic vision competing against others which are "polluted" by the fact that they are predicated on subjective values is incoherent and wrong.

Re: ...

[tcpip]

No, the point I'm making is that you can't separate moral concerns from economic ones.

I think you can, vis-a-vis the difference between normative and positive economics, or political economy and economic science. Or just as one can recite history as just dates and events, or murder statistics.

I'm not saying that one should treat economics in such a fashion, but one certainly can be quite technocratic about it.

Mind you, the political distribution to the means of production is prior to exchange mechanisms...

Re: ...

[lesslucid]

Well... I think one can have a genuinely "positive" economics, so long as one understands that it can only ever be either descriptive or predictive. The moment it becomes prescriptive - the moment you make use of one of those descriptions to recommend a course of action - it necessarily has a normative element.

And this is merely an abstract, hypothetical possibility, in much the same way that one could hypothetically have a "medical science" which is interested in the diagnosis but disinterested in the treatment or cure of illness. In reality, everyone who is interested in economics wants to know how economies work in order to know what the best course of action to take is in real situations affecting real people.

You're doing it again!

[goumindong]

"
Economics tells us that free markets lead to greater shared prosperity than central planning does."

No. It does not. Economics tells us that free markets lead to greater net welfare than central planning does within the very strict definition of "net welfare" as understood within the economic literature. (also it tells us that this is not true most of the time, and that many types of central planning can enhance net welfare under certain situations where the assumptions of free markets break down)

Saying that it leads to greater shared prosperity requires a definition of shared prosperity that you claim we cannot assume into evidence. Defining shared prosperity in a different way may mean that economics tells us that we should do things differently.